


Breathing in Obera

by argle_fraster



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Community: avengerkink, Gen, M/M, liberal use of google maps, oh god first time writing in a new fandom, someone hold me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-14
Updated: 2012-05-14
Packaged: 2017-11-05 08:36:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/404420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/argle_fraster/pseuds/argle_fraster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is an anchor leading back to Stark Tower, and Bruce isn't so sure he dislikes it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breathing in Obera

The humidity is so high that it feels like molasses in his lungs. Breathing it in and out - and he does, in and out, over and repeat - takes so much work that the very act of it feels exhausting. It's the good kind of exhausting, though; the kind that, on the outskirts of Obera, Argentina, where the roads are in disrepair and the building around him creaks and groans, he can lose himself in without feeling like he's giving everything up. These moments are rare - rarer still in a place like Obera, where the infant mortality rate is so high and doctors are in constant demand.

Bruce stares at the ceiling, laced with a patchwork of mold and rot and spider webs that fade to black in the night, and concentrates on breathing in and out. Below the surface, rumbling, he can feel the cold sting of anger, but it's sedated; it's not necessary, now, and it's at a low point. The heat is so unbearable even his subconscious doesn't want to expend extra energy by letting a crazed adrenaline monster out. For that, he's thankful. In a world of nothing, it's something.

He looks at the moonlight streaming in through the window. It's too hot to sleep. Sleep is not something Bruce banks on most of the time, anyway - nightmares are an easy gateway into a transformation he would not even be conscious for. He gets up and tries to push the sweat-soaked hair from his forehead and only succeeds halfway; the rest of it hangs on his forehead and itches, and he tries to ignore it. If he can't sleep, then he figures he should do _something_.

There is not much for a man with limited local language skills and a keen desire to escape most humanity's notice to do in Obera at night. Bruce finds a spot on the floor where the wood is cleanest, the place where the termites have left large enough alone to still be relatively flat and splinter-free. Tugging his duffel over, he rummages around hoping to find a bit of something he can use as a writing utensil - he's factored equations in worse conditions.

He doesn't find chalk, as he expected, but instead finds a Sharpie.

It's jarringly out of place in his bag, even more out of place in Obera. Bruce knows that it was not in his duffel when he left Nepal, because his bag had been looted through by xenophobic airline authorities on the way out, and seeing the contents of one's life deposited on a dirty metal folding table in a backwater airport has a way of sticking in one's memory.

The Sharpie was not in his bag in Nepal, just as the sweatshirt was _not_ in his bag upon leaving Tartu but _was_ there the first night in Lesosibirsk, and the bottle of Tylenol was _not_ in his possessions when he'd left the States but _was_ tucked into the front pocket when he went through his things in Tuy Hoa.

It is staring down at the Sharpie sitting in his palm, reminding his lungs to inhale and exhale the air that feels heavy with so many things he can't name, that Bruce wonders if maybe there is more than one thing he can't run from - and for once, a thing that, perhaps, he doesn't really want to escape.

\--

Apparently, Tony was expecting him.

"Good, you're back," is the only greeting that Bruce gets when he leaves his duffel on the couch not quite knowing if he's allowed to do so and goes in search of the man. "I've got an equation you've got to see. I've managed to stabilize the isotopes here, and cool the mixture to a point where-"

Tony stops, which is somewhat rare, and looks up. "Aren't you going to sit? I'm talking, and this time, it's about something important."

"It's always about something important," Bruce says, absently.

"I knew that," Tony replies, with one corner of his mouth quirking upwards, "but I didn't think that you did."

"Were you eventually going to tell me that you were following me halfway around the Earth?" Bruce asks.

Tony snorts a bit, and bends back over his work. "I'm a busy man, Banner; I don't have time to be playing spy in parts of the world that lack sanitary waste disposal."

"And yet you knew I was in parts of the world without modern toilets."

"To be fair, that can be said about at least fifty percent of this planet," Tony says. "And you should really look into this newfangled thing called a 'telephone' - pretty spiffy at relaying information across vast distances."

Bruce sits, without wanting to and only because Tony seems set on being as difficult as possible. "Stark."

"Banner," he receives back.

"You're going to have to let me leave sometimes," Bruce tells him.

"Pretty sure I did," Tony says. He looks up, eyebrows high. "I also didn't tell you to come back."

There are objects in Bruce's duffel that he never purchased, nor saw before, and for some reason, all the explanations for why they bothered him are gone. Bruce can't even remember what they were.

"That's not the point," Bruce says.

"I really don't think we're having the same conversation," Tony says, shrugging. Finally - mercifully - he stops fiddling with his latest toy and stands back, crossing his arms over his chest to stare at Bruce for several seconds. "Let me get this straight. You're angry at me because you think that I let you leave so that I could guilt-trip you into returning by having my people stay out of sight and provide you with things I thought were necessary and important at the time?"

"Yes," Bruce says. "That's exactly why I'm mad. Invasion of privacy notwithstanding."

_That_ seems to surprise Tony. "Ah, so you _are_ angry about that."

"I was doing my own thing," Bruce says, feeling all of a sudden very weary.

"I was _letting_ you do your own thing," Tony points out.

Something flares in Bruce's chest - hot and weighty, like the air in Obera - and for a quick moment, he mistakes it for anger. The gut-wrenching, tightening fear is automatic. "That implies that you have to give me permission to do things."

"Well, that wasn't what I was trying to say with this."

The plane ride was long, and the lack of sleep is weighing on him. Bruce presses his fingers against his forehead, kneading the skin above his eyebrows, and sighs.

"Let's skip the next twenty minutes of sarcasm," he suggests, "and you just _tell_ me what you were trying to say with all of this."

"I want you to live," Tony answers, immediately - it's the lack of hesitation that is the most surprising, the blunt honesty strange and refreshing. Then his features curl in thought, and he adds, "Even if you are doing it in places where they use holes for toilets."

"But you are fine with me leaving," Bruce says.

"More like I know you'll do it even if I'm not. Am I right?"

Bruce doesn't answer. Truth be told, he's not sure what the answer really is, and staying silent eliminates his need for it. Tony rounds the table and leans against it with one hip, and Bruce can see the glowing outline of the arc reactor through the t-shirt the man is wearing - the circle of blue is a little out of place with the design on the fabric, so that the reactor's glow looks like a strange, out-of-focus bleed of the colors.

"Let's assume that I'm right," Tony continues. "Now, let's look at you. I didn't tell you to come back. I didn't tell you much of anything. So why _did_ you come back?"

Because seeing the items that were not his own meant something in a way Bruce can't quite put into words. He's spent years systematically tearing down every last thread connecting him to other people, and now there's a tether that he can't quite seem to disengage from. An expensive, state of the art tether. The line leads back to Stark Tower, to S.H.I.E.L.D., to the others, and it's wrapped around the other guy's wrist like a red thread of fate.

"I really missed toilet paper," Bruce says.

Tony's face splits into a grin. "Then it's a good thing we never run out here."

It seems that it's enough; enough of an admission, anyway, and that's probably the only thing that matters. Bruce's anchor is firmly embedded in Tony's living room, and he's more at peace with the idea than he thought he would be. It's an odd thing, attachment: he's gone so long without it that he barely knew what the hum and throb of it in his chest still felt like.

"I'm never going to get rid of you, am I?" Bruce asks, but rolls up his sleeves anyway, because he's been watching Tony fiddle with things for the last twenty minutes and his curiosity is getting the better of him.

"Oh, big guy, you don't know the half of it."

It's a promise. Bruce can feel it hanging in the air between them. He thinks that maybe if he reaches out, he can actually touch it - he tries, and instead, finds his fingers wrapped around Tony's bicep. Tony shifts to curl his own hand around Bruce's elbow. Feels like an oath, anyway, even without the ceremonial blood-letting.

They've done enough of that.

"Well," Bruce starts, and exhales, and it's so much easier than breathing in Obera, "show me what you've got, then."


End file.
